Iraq: invasion that will live in infamy

The war on Iraq is not over. In the United States President George Bush has had to admit that his accusations about Baghdad’s purchase of uranium in Niger were wrong. In the United Kingdom, the suicide of Dr David Kelly is making Prime Minister Tony Blair’s future less certain. In Iraq attacks against US troops are increasing, and the new governing council seems incapable of guiding the country out of its present chaos.

SEPTEMBER 2002 was marked by three events of considerable importance, closely related. The United States, the most powerful state in history, announced a new national security strategy asserting that it will maintain global hegemony permanently. Any challenge will be blocked by force, the dimension in which the US reigns supreme. At the same time, the war drums began to beat to mobilise the population for an invasion of Iraq. And the campaign opened for the mid-term congressional elections, which would determine whether the administration would be able to carry forward its radical international and domestic agenda.

The new “imperial grand strategy”, as it was termed at once by John Ikenberry writing in the leading establishment journal, presents the US as “a revisionist state seeking to parlay its moment ary advantages into a world order in which it runs the show”, a unipolar world in which “no state or coalition could ever challenge it as global leader, protector, and enforcer” (1). These policies are fraught with danger even for the US itself, Ikenberry warned, joining many others in the foreign policy elite.

What is to be protected is US power and the interests it represents, not the world, which vigorously opposed the concept. Within a few months studies revealed that fear of the US had reached remarkable heights, along with distrust of the political leadership. An international Gallup poll in December, which was barely noticed in the US, found almost no support for Washington’s announced plans for a war in Iraq carried out unilaterally by America and its allies - in effect, the US-United Kingdom coalition.

Washington told the United Nations that it could be relevant by endorsing US plans, or it could be a debating society. The US had the “sovereign right to take military action”, the administration’s moderate Colin Powell told the World Economic Forum, which also vigorously opposed the war plans: "When we (...)